This story contains sexually explicit material.
Please e-mail comments to twalden4 at juno dot com with ASSTR in the subject line.
Copyright 2012. All rights reserved.
Seneca Falls photo by lonecellotheory. Some rights reserved.

Technical note: A gasp is a rapid intake of breath. In this story, it also means a rapid expelling of breath, since it is close to the sound I mean. Sigh, grunt, groan, pant, and scream don't work.

Anya Goes South

When I was small no one ever talked to me so the language part of my brain never developed properly. My father had wanted another boy, and my mother thought my brother and I would entertain each other, but he ignored me. Which was good, because he only seemed interested in breaking things. I was quiet and didn't say much, and there were never any words in my dreams. They were silent. I just watched things, or was chased by something and woke up scared. I was also bad at remembering numbers, names, and faces, but good at figuring things out. When my sister was born we talked to each other until she decided I was stupid, which she probably picked up from how my parents treated me. What I wanted most was to get away from my family.

I remember when I was two I liked staring at the little orange and white koi goldfish at the pet store, especially the ones with some black on them. We went there often since my father was very particular about what he fed his dogs. I also liked the black and white zebra finches, gray and yellow cockatiels, and blue or green parakeets, but I always ended up back at the koi. They could move around and drift in their tank, while the birds just stayed on their perches or fluttered a little, and they were noisy. The bug eyed and deformed goldfish just sort of wriggled about without being able to swim very well. They scared me. The angelfish, neon tetras, and schools of tiger bards were fun, but they were tiny and manic. The koi were majestic in their stillness. I wanted to be little and swim in their tank with them.

One time at the state park when I was four, I was eating a green apple and watching the bluegill from one of the shady rocks on the edge of the large pond. They have a dark spot by their gill above their pectoral fin. They wave their pectoral fins and use them to back up and for movement when they're not going fast. They were looking for food. After I finished most of my apple, I threw it into the water. It floated on the surface and moved with the ripples. The fish approached it and started biting pieces out of it, one at a time or two in succession. I squatted down on the rock to see better. The apple bobbed each time one of them attacked it. It got noticeably smaller. I could feel them biting into the apple, just as I had done a moment before, and feel the unchewed chunk sliding down my throat. I felt the water against my fins as I waved them like arms. The water had felt cold to me before, but now it had no temperature. It was just there. No, that's not exactly right. It was more like it was a world I was part of. I took no more notice of it than one usually did of air. Air is a hard concept for a four year old. I could feel the wind when it blew, but air was something I was supposed to believe in without being able to see it or touch it. The water was something like that to the fish, but more solid. Through it I could feel the movement of the other fish in the lines along my sides. It was touch functioning like hearing or seeing. A shadow appeared and we all darted away into darker water. I felt a touch on my shoulder, and my sister said my mother had been calling me. I said it was hard to hear voices underwater.

Pet shop visits became more interesting after that. I found I could float in the glass tank with the goldfish and stare out at myself and the other people and creatures in the store. I tried drawing what the world looked like from inside a fish tank with my crayons. When I showed one of the pictures to my mother she didn't pay any attention.

After I started school when I was six, my mother had me help out in the Portuguese bakery where she worked. At first I entertained the old ladies, who thought I was cute, and brought them their natas (custard tarts), queijadas (cream tarts), and sausage soup. They came in to sit at the tables and chat. They liked that I could talk to them in Portuguese. Not all the kids learned it. Afterward I would be given a pastry and sent outside to play, which consisted of sitting on the step in the half paved gravel area behind the bakery, by the garbage. There was room for two cars if one blocked the other. I would take my pad and draw the building behind, the few small leafless trees on the edge of the lot, or the birds. I liked hearing the sound and feeling the movement of my pencil moving over the rough texture of the paper.

The house sparrows, which are really finches, not sparrows, would hop around my feet looking at me sideways and waiting for crumbs. If I was feeling generous I would break off a few from what I was eating and toss them some. I could feel them pecking at the ground and swallowing the crumbs. I twisted my head to look up and make sure I hadn't moved. There was a noise, and I spread my wings and walked through the air to the lower branches of the nearest tree. I blinked and for a moment looked up at myself sitting in the tree, then I was just me. I had never happened with birds before, only fish. I was excited and flustered, and spent the next half hour vainly trying to be a bird again. They were happy to come down and eat but wouldn't let me back in again. I realized I had been drawing the birds wrong. They are not blobs with wings. They are people that fly. They don't fly by flapping their wings any more than people walk by waving their legs. They climb through the air like a squirrel in a tree, except the air keeps trying to drop them. It's not like a fish in water.

A few days later I was lying in bed waiting until it was time to get up and get ready for school. Light was already coming in at the top of the shade, and I could hear crows calling to each other in the oak trees outside. I wished the window was open so I could hear their voices better. I was surprised to realize that they weren't just calling, they did have voices, and a language that I could understand. I was perched on a thick branch above the brown leaves that covered the sloped ground far below. I listened to news about who was where, what had happened during the night, which other creatures were nearby, weather and sky conditions at different locations, where people wanted to look for food, and other things I can't explain. The concepts do not exist in the human brain. The others were moving around from branch to branch. I wanted to move to a higher perch for a different view. This body was much larger and heavier than the sparrow though still just a ball of fluff. Flying took much more planning. I had to consider wind speed and variability, obstacles and how they affected the wind and reflected back the air current I created, others moving about, and the energy expenditure needed. These weren't things that required thought, they were things I experienced. I don't know how else to put it. I spread my arms and stepped out into the air. First I went down a little to get some speed, which was easier than muscling my way directly upward. I cupped the air with my fingers, directed myself with my tail, and flew. Seconds later I coasted upward to kill airspeed, dumped air, landed on my new perch, and folded my arms over my back. I know it sounds painful, but that's where they went when not in use. I added my view to the information being passed around. Then I was being yelled at and told I would be late. For school. I had never thought about what a strange concept school was, and what an inefficient method for sharing information.

When I was eight my father decided to teach me baseball. He had tried to teach my brother fishing and baseball, but all he was interested in was video games. I had liked the attention when he tried teaching me to fish, but it hadn't worked out. Catching one had been so painful for me that I made sure no fish came near when I was in the boat. So now it was baseball. By the time we got to the park it turned out to be a hotter fall day than we had expected, so he took off his shirt. I said I wanted to take mine off too. This amused him. I was wearing jeans and sneakers, my hair was short and covered with my Cardinals cap, and no one here knew us. I could pass for a boy. He said okay, but don't tell your mother or sister, so I took off my tee shirt. It had been years since I had been allowed to go topless, and it had the thrill of the forbidden. I just had to remember to use the mens room. None of the people on the grass around us paid any attention except for one nervous old guy who figured out what was going on. Catching was easy. I had the glove my brother didn't want and could read the ball as it flew. The way the ball spun and interacted with the air currents around it was like the wing of a bird in flight. I knew where it was going, when it would be there, and how to meet it. Throwing was harder. I didn't throw like a girl but didn't know all the fine points. I was able to pick them up. Throwing is one of the instincts for humans, like breathing, drinking, seeing, eating, walking and speech. It is what distinguishes primates from other animals. Only we can do it. Except adults forget how to see, like my father couldn't see the pervert who was watching me. I purposely missed a catch that would roll toward him and strolled over to give him a better a better view of whatever it was he wanted to see. He got up and nearly tripped over himself running away. I wouldn't have tried it if my father hadn't been right there.

A few weeks later, when my father started teaching me to bat, I found I could see the details of the movement of the ball as it flew toward me the same way a hawk sees the movement of its prey as it stoops down from above. The bat was an extension of my arms the same way feathers are an extension of a bird's arm, except a bat is easier to control. I could connect with the ball and hit it wherever I wanted, all I lacked was power. When I saw how excited my father was getting by how well I was doing, I got scared and started making more strikes. He decided it had been beginner's luck.

On the way home my father stopped at a strip mall to buy some work pants. I waited in the car. The the big casual clothing store was on top of a hill off the interstate. The sun was going down and shone through a few dark clouds onto the bare trees in a wooded area next to the parking lot. A flock of birds was wheeling and turning as a group above them, getting closer and farther away. We were starlings hunting gnats as a flock in the evening during our migration south. The flock moved as a single creature that kept changing shape, and I sliced through the air and turned with those nearest me. Those at the leading side got more food, but the leading side kept shifting as we changed direction and shifted our positions within the flock while tearing through clouds of insects. I moved to catch and swallow any gnats I could as I kept my position with the others. In was different from tree swallows who all go in different directions or circle in a swarm. My father gave me a strange look when he got into the car but didn't say anything.

That winter my parents decided to take me with them on their vacation to Brazil. They had taken my brother before, but he wanted to stay with his friends. They would take my sister another time. We stayed in two rooms at a small hotel outside Rio de Janeiro that was run by a couple and their son, who was three years older than me. It was supposed to be for two weeks, but with travel time and flying on cheaper days it was really a week and a half. My father spent time with the boy, teaching him carpentry, plumbing and wiring. That evening there was a man playing guitar in the hotel restaurant. My parents danced. The boy came over and asked me if I danced. I said no. He said he would teach me. I wanted to but was afraid. It didn't take much encouragement to get me out on the floor. I was wearing a dumb tee shirt and jeans and sneakers and tried to be self conscious, but everyone ignored us except for a couple of old ladies who smiled, so I gave it up. My parents carefully avoided looking at us. It was a small dance floor but wasn't crowded. The locals were all dressed nicely, but the tourists were wearing anything. He showed me the steps of the samba. Human mating dances are easier than those of birds and fish but also more complex. I picked it up without too much trouble and did better than most of the other tourists. He seemed impressed. I was pleased. After a few dances I was enraptured by the feel of the sinuous movements and gentle body contact. When the musician took a break, the boy went up and took out his own guitar. He was amazing. I decided I was in love. My father asked me to dance. He said I was doing well and tried not to act surprised.

The next morning I asked if I could have a new shirt. I said I liked dancing in my jeans and sneakers but would like a prettier top. My mother smiled and said she would be glad to take me shopping. We found something that was white and a little frilly, somewhere between the shirts the men wore and the top part of a ladies dress. That afternoon after it cooled off a bit we went to Copacabana beach. Of course it is summer down there when it is winter back home. My mother let me buy a tinier bikini, since that is what people wore here. It was really still just a girls two piece suit, not a bikini, because I didn't have any breasts or hips, but it was skimpier. I was surprised by my father's Speedo, but that's what the men wore. Okay, all the men's suits were actually a little wider than a real Speedo. I went out and swam around and body surfed like the men even though all the other girls and women just splashed around in the waves. Even the men didn't swim much or go out very far, but I liked being in the water.

I came back, put on more sun block and my sunglasses, and lay on my towel on the hot sand with my eyes closed. In the open I could sense any bird within about four hundred feet, maybe three times that if I could see or hear them. I went with one of the kelp gulls that soared close along the edge of the water. Once I was with a bird distance didn't matter. These were like regular gulls except darker gray or black. I was looking for fish under the surface close to the shore. There were enough obstacles creating updrafts from the onshore breeze that with a little maneuvering I didn't have to use any energy. As a bird I couldn't sense fish directly, but I could see into the water well. I could see all the people and vendors on the beach as I flew by above them. Some of the men wore baggy suits, but most of them displayed their attributes like the women did. Even the ones with erections, or at least partial erections, didn't seem concerned. A few of the French women were topless. Up here the heat didn't bother me. I felt the air rushing through my lungs and along the surface of my wings. I made continual adjustments as I surfed a wave I could feel but couldn't see. I liked flying even more the swimming. I could stay up here forever.

That night after we had finished dancing I asked the boy to walk me back to my room. When we got there I waited until he was about to turn away, but then I kissed him. He smiled a little, said good night again, and walked away down the hall. I decided he hated me, that my sister was right, I was the worst stupid in the world, and cried myself to sleep, but the next night he walked me to my door again and gave me a brief kiss. He didn't even embrace me like he did when we danced. I didn't know what to think, so I gave up.

As I lay in bed not thinking before I turned out the light, I saw tiny white specks flying around above the lamp shade. I knew they were gnats and could remember what they tasted like, at least to a bird. I knew there was something else there too, something I couldn't see in the shadows. I felt strange. It was just standing there, but the orientation was wrong. Down was in the wrong direction. To a fish, down means something completely different. The more important surface is in the other direction. To a bird, down is important mainly as a point of reference. It doesn't have to spend all its time trying to balance and keep from falling over. Now all of these were wrong. I felt confused and dizzy. I flicked out my tongue and snared a gnat that was as big as my eye. I felt it crunch as I swallowed it. I was a gecko standing on the wall, regarding the rest of the gnats critically, wondering if I could go two for two. Now I could see him, and found myself trying to look in three different directions at once. I stayed with him and stalked closer, then struck again and caught another meal. That was as much as I could eat, so I sauntered up to the ceiling and took a shortcut across it to the window. Outside I went down the wall and up into a shrub. It turned out primates weren't the only ones who could throw, although technically I don't know if you can throw a tongue. So now I had reptiles to worry about too. I guess it made sense. They had decided birds were really reptiles. I supposed frogs would be next. I couldn't wait.

I started doing setups and waiting tables at the bakery when I was eleven. At first I had trouble keeping the orders straight. I still wasn't being paid, but part of my time was credited to my mother. It didn't matter. I had quit Little League the year before. I decided it was stupid. The boys and their parents resented me, and the coaches didn't like me to do too well. I got tired of holding back, but I had still usually gotten a hit when we really needed one. My sister had gone to Brazil the next year. I went back the year after that and realized it was the boy's job to dance with customers.

Angela invited me to a slumber party. I went even though I didn't know her very well. It was something to do. At least she had no creepy brother. I had been at other slumber parties and knew girls talked about sex and practiced kissing and showed off their bodies. After a while when we were all gathered downstairs in front of the television with the popcorn, Melissa said we should take off our nightshirts. It sounded exciting, but not everyone was sure they wanted to. Melissa said she would, and then everyone else had to, so she did and sat there waiting in just her pink underpants and bunny slippers. Of course she was the one who already had full breasts. They hung there in front of us with their pink nipples standing up. She turned a little to show them off better. So Angela and I took ours off next, then the others. Melissa had full breasts, Amy was getting there, Angela was starting to bud out, Jennifer still looked like a boy, and mine were too small. Otherwise we all looked about the same in our different colored underpants. We were the same age, most of us within a few months of each other. Melissa had black hair and was slightly thinner, Amy had dark brown hair and was a little bit heavier and shorter, and both Angela and Jennifer had darker brown hair but Angela's was longer and she was taller while Jennifer had fairer skin than the rest of us. I had black hair and a more olive complexion.

We all sat on the carpet looking at each other in the flickering glow from the television. Nobody said anything or giggled. All of our nipples were hard and swollen, except with Jennifer it was hard to tell. Mine were a dark brown and starting to spread over my breasts. Amy's were small and brown. Angela's were dark red. Jennifer's were still sort of red. After several moments, Angela slowly reached out her hand and touched Melissa's nipple with the tips of two of her fingers. I felt an electric thrill go through my breast, or her breast, I couldn't tell. Melissa sucked in her lip. Angela looked up into Melissa's eyes and gently stoked her nipple. Melissa met her gaze, but as Angela continued stoking, she closed her eyes and tilted her head back. The rest of us were staring at them and hardly breathing. Then Melissa's teeth let go of her lower lip. Her mouth opened slightly and her breathing got deeper. I felt something wet in my underpants, or in Melissa's. Angela lowered her hand, and they smiled at each other.

Then Angela came over and sat in front of me and stared into my eyes. I was mesmerized, but maybe not completely, because I saw Melissa move over to Jennifer and ask if she wanted to touch her breast. Jennifer just stared at her, so Melissa took her hand, and as she placed the fingertips on her other breast, I felt Angela place hers on mine. I felt the electric thrill in both my breasts, or both our breasts, or something, but the thrill was different in each of us. No one can tell what another person is feeling, except now somehow I did. When Melissa had Jennifer slowly stoking her breast, she looked over at Amy. Then she reached out her hand toward her. Amy came over and sat by her. Melissa put Amy's fingers on her free breast and her own hand on Amy's knee. Some time later she put her other hand on Jennifer's knee, moved it gently up the outside of her thigh, onto her back, and pulled her forward. Jennifer shifted her position, leaned forward, and I felt Angela's lips meet mine and the pressure of her hand on my back. It felt reassuring. Kissing was a normal part of slumber parties. But this was still different. We hadn't started out pretending one of us was a boy, and we were touching each other in ways I had never experienced before. It made the kissing much more erotic. Angela's mouth opened and I felt the tip of her tongue brushing over my lips. I met it with the tip of my own. She sucked my lower lip into her mouth and nibbled on it with her teeth. I felt hot all over and put my arms around her. We shifted our position and she put hers around me. I felt our naked breasts pressed against each other and held on to her. I saw that now Melissa and Amy were kissing.

Sounds started coming from Angela's parents' bedroom. I could hear her mother moan once softly, and then again. It was very arousing and seemed to act as a signal. Melissa lay down with Amy and Jennifer on either side of her. Angela and I lay down together and she rolled on top of me with her thighs around my leg. She continued kissing me, then kissed over to the corner of my jaw, down my neck, over my chest, onto my breast, and sucked my nipple into her mouth. She bit it gently while she squeezed the other one and I arched my back in ecstasy. She slid off next to me, and I felt her hand move down my ribs, across my belly, into my underpants, through my sparse pubic hair, and onto my slit. I parted my legs for her. She cupped my crotch with her hand and held me. The soft moans from the bedroom continued, a little more closely spaced now. Angela parted my folds and found the wetness within. Her finger slid inside and squirmed. So did I. It came out and brushed my clitoris. I opened my mouth and my breathing got deeper. She stoked me. I breathed faster and moaned very softly. Melissa was kneeling between Jennifer and Amy and fingering both of them. Louder sounds from the bedroom. I was getting close. Angela's mother moaned faster and her father started to grunt. I felt the sensation build and build in my crotch and then gasped as it exploded through my entire body. I was the first one who came. I saw Jennifer arching her back on the far side on Melissa with Melissa's hand in her underpants, and then she spasmed and came. Melissa left that hand where it was and turned back to Amy. Her breasts bobbled as she bucked. We all watched her. She thrust against Melissa's hand which I could see writhing inside her underpants. Finally she spasmed as she came in a series of soft grunts, and her face relaxed. I had lost track of what was happening in the bedroom. After that it seemed like everyone had had enough, because we all put our nightshirts back on and did normal slumber party stuff, but it felt like what had happened was okay because we had all kept our underpants on.

The next month Angela had another slumber party with the same people. When we were all gathered in front of the television again, Melissa said she wanted to start a pagan group. Amy said she didn't want to do devil worship. Melissa said it wouldn't be like that. There would be fairies and Mother Earth and water nymphs and tree dryads. She had Amy at the word fairies. Melissa said she had chosen Angela because she was her friend and thought it was a good idea. Also she had parents who would leave us alone. She chose Amy because she was smart and insightful, Jennifer because she was independent and slightly rebellious, and me because I moved like an animal and was always watching birds. And none of us were part of other cliques. I asked if we would be witches. She said not really, but we could try to do magic if we wanted to. Mostly it would be about rituals, costumes, and spiritual growth, like the Masons. I asked what she meant by spiritual growth. She said being good to the earth and learning to be a better person. I said okay, I would try it. Jennifer asked who would be in charge. Melissa hesitated and looked at Angela, then said we could all take turns being High Priestess. Jennifer looked torn between fear and longing, but said it sounded good. Melissa said we could have meetings at slumber parties once a month on the full moon, like last month. Some of us stopped to think about that. Amy asked in a low voice if all the rituals would be like last month. Melissa said no, but some of them could, if we wanted. Sex magic was very powerful. She managed to keep a straight face, until Jennifer said no kidding.

We chose pagan names. Melissa had already chosen Raven, Amy wanted Otter, Angela stayed the same, Jennifer chose Cobweb, and I decided to change the spelling of my name from Ana to Anya because that's how it is pronounced. At the third meeting Jennifer was High Priestess and Melissa was Jack of the Wood who had to have sex with everyone. After that we also had a Horned God who had sex with the High Priestess, so whoever was Jack that month only needed to have sex with two other people. Except for one time when Melissa's ritual had us sit in a circle and masturbate. One way or another we each always had at least one orgasm. I liked having sex with Jennifer. She was warm and slippery inside, and as I fingered her she would thrust against my hand as she got more and more excited until she gasped and came. We took turns designing rituals. Angela's were about journeys to exotic locations, Amy's were about magical beings, Jennifer's were about meeting wise teachers, mine were about species change, and Melissa's were about sex. We tried going skyclad once, but then went back to wearing underpants. I thought that was sexier. Jennifer developed very pretty breasts with pink nipples. We never did oral sex, we only used our fingers on each other. It had worked the first time, and we didn't want to mess things up. We talked about having more girls in the group but were afraid to ask anyone else. Every time, Angela's parents signaled us when it was time to start having sex. Even if it was the night before or the night after the full moon. Even at that organizational second meeting. They were as regular as clockwork. We designed our rituals to include or avoid them. Maybe the moon affected them. Or maybe it was the thought of a house full of half naked nymphets. The whole thing fell apart after a year and a half when we started going out with boys.

I started working the register and behind the counter at the bakery when I was thirteen. My breasts were big enough that I could pass for being sixteen and legal, but my mother still got my pay. I liked the register because I could stand behind the glass display case and look out at the people. It reminded me of when I was little, but I didn't know why. I was good at it. I had a knack for getting people through quickly without making them feel rushed.

When I was fifteen the boy I had known in Brazil moved in with us. My father had continued teaching him construction work, and when he turned eighteen offered to sponsor him and get him a job as a carpenter's apprentice here. His name was Jose. It's Portuguese. The J is pronounced like a J, not like an H. We went on dates but nothing much happened. What were we supposed to do? He was living in my house, and my father was sponsoring him. My father apparently wanted us to marry, but we would have to live like brother and sister for three years first. It wasn't going to happen. He was a nice boy in spite of being a gigolo. He hadn't brought much with him, but one of the things was a picture I had drawn after I first met him of him on stage with his guitar. He showed it to me one time when we were out. I didn't know if that was touching or creepy. I didn't show my pictures to people, but I had been in love and given it to him. He had brought his guitar and still played. He asked if I still drew. I said no, we couldn't afford lessons. He frowned. Had I ever asked for them? I said no, but they never gave me anything. He said they bought me that nice top I wore the second night in Rio. I said my father had wanted a boy he could teach things, like he had taught Jose building. All he had taught me was baseball. What good was that? He said my father had taught him to paint. I said huh? He said painting a wall was not the same as painting a bird, but it's the same medium. Some of what you learn in one form can be used in the other. I got scared. I asked how he knew I drew birds. Did he look at my sketch book? He said no, he had seen me studying birds as I drew and figured it out. I said oh. He said my father didn't understand girls, but he cared about me. He said my father had threatened him with bodily harm and deportation if he hurt me. I said I hadn't known that. It was hard to imagine my father threatening anybody. He said there was a lot I didn't know about my father. So I asked my father to teach me to paint, and learned about brushes and prep and coverage and cleaning. I asked about art lessons and we found a class.

After a year my father asked Jose to declare his intentions. He said he didn't want to marry me. There were some bad feelings, and he moved out a while later. It was also partly my fault. I didn't want to marry him either but had been pressuring him to have sex. His saying no might have been the right thing given the situation, but the refusal hurt both of us. His moving out hurt more. I remembered one time when we were dancing outside. I still liked dancing with him. It had started to rain and I fled indoors with the others. He had stayed outside by himself, a young man dancing in the midst of rain. I started doing drugs. They weren't hard to find, I just had to not say no. I went out with a lot of boys. One of them who was impressed by my enthusiasm asked if I wanted to go to a sex party. He knew about one but needed a girl to get in. I considered it for a couple seconds and said yes. So the next week we did. When we got inside he disappeared. There were people standing around with drinks talking in various stages of dress and undress. There were some couples or groups having sex, also in various stages of dress and undress. I got a beer and stood around wondering if I should just take off my clothes. Then I heard an orgasm that sounded familiar, but I suppose when you've heard one orgasm you've heard them all. A few minutes later I heard another one I recognized. I went over and there was Amy under a jumble of naked bodies, and one of them was Melissa's. Someone asked who's your friend, and I was introduced and fucked. To everyone and by a goodly number, respectively. It felt like old times except without the fingers. Or the underpants. I suppose I should have been at least a little embarrassed by what happened, but I never could remember numbers, names, or faces.

When I finished high school I wanted to go to community college and study art. I wasn't sure what I'd do with it afterward. They didn't have sign painters anymore. My parents weren't sure either, but they agreed. I took the courses in painting and graphic design that they offered. By this time I was getting my own paycheck at the bakery. I asked about cake decorating. They said they didn't do that sort of thing. Most people in the art program transferred to a four year college when they completed their courses. I didn't see any reason to. I traveled around to art and craft festivals and tourist areas trying to sell my paintings and cards. Some people bought them, many didn't. I had been sharing an apartment with some other people, but now moved in with a guy named Chris who preached love and brotherhood. He seemed a bit crazy and self centered, but fun. Often he brought home some friend or other, and we'd get high, and I'd have sex with Chris and his friend Jack. Then sometimes it was two friends, and I'd have sex with Chris and his friend Jack and his other friend Jack. It made it easier to keep track of names, though not faces. But Chris was a nice guy. He'd let his friends go first. It was fun. When I asked if maybe his friends could not come around quite so often, he'd start talking about love and brotherhood again and tell me I could drive a duck to drink. Then he'd take another shot to prove it. Of course part of spreading love and brotherhood involved selling drugs. Having a live-in dealer had its advantages and disadvantages, so I guess it balanced out.

Then we had to go to Baltimore to meet with his supplier. Something about a special shipment. It was a long drive, and it was late when we got there. Chris parked in a dark corner of the lot, and we went into a place called The Alchemist Spice Bar and Chocolate Shop. We sat in the back, and I looked at the menu while he talked business with some old guy. I considered the Chocolate Geckos with Macadamia Nuts and the Cardamom Date Cookies but finally decided on a Carrot Nutmeg Cookie. I munched on it while they tried to come to an agreement. When I finished and looked up the man was staring at me. He said I was a pretty little thing, why didn't I crawl underneath the table? Chris laughed and said now that everything was settled why didn't we all go outside for some air? He slipped me a couple pills, and everything felt fine. When we got to the car Chris said just to keep things friendly why didn't I start out by giving his friend Jack here a blow job? It had been a long trip even though I had slept part of the way, and some sex sounded like a great idea. Jack seemed to have put on some weight. The car rocked when he got in. Let's get him some air. Oh, I guess he'd been sick. Maybe if I pulled up my shirt and undid my bra I could get him interested. Nope. Ow! Un-uh, mustn't pinch. Well I could distract him easily enough. Anyway he seemed to have woken up. If that was best he could do it would have to serve. Oh yes, umm, here he comes. When I'd finished him off, Chris's other friend Jack showed up, so I did him too. Jack was in better shape now. Oh yes, this was more like it, umm. Nice slippery marbles too. Then his other friend Jack had recovered so I did him again. An amazing recovery. I was so glad. Then his other friend Jack had also recovered so I did him again. Jack was thinner now but longer and just as full. Then his other friend Jack had recovered again so I did him. The titties worked really well this time and perked Jack right up. Then his other friend Jack had recovered again so I did him too. Maybe not fully recovered, but enough. Then his other friend Jack had recovered so I did him another time. Jack was a little crooked now. I would try to be more careful.

Early the next afternoon when I woke up in the hotel room, Chris wasn't there. I showered and changed and walked back up the street to The Alchemist. A different man was working there. I decided to have a Fat Gingerbread Cookie for breakfast. I looked around. There were lily pads painted on the ceiling and pictures of fish on the walls by different artists. One of the pictures was mine. I asked the man how they'd gotten it. He was the owner. He said someone had brought it back from a trip for him because they knew he liked fish pictures. I said I had lots more if he wanted them. He said did I now and looked at me carefully. He said he wanted an underwater mural to go with his lily pads if he could find the right artist. Did I think I could I paint his wall for him? I said I knew how to do that. I asked if he had a large sheet of paper. He brought one out and laid it on a table. I picked up a pencil and asked what he wanted. He said a castle moat. Painted like Monet but more whimsical. Stones of the castle foundation. Fish or schools of fish. A turtle or frog. Water plants. Rays of sunlight. I sketched. I used fish like his pictures where I could, in schools when appropriate. I made the foundation stones look a little like a sunken temple. I put it the stems of the lily pads, and light slanting through the water, the feet of swans near the top, a newt and turtle and frog, a broken sword and a wooden bucket. I stood back, and he said yes, that was what he wanted. When could I do it? I said right now if he had the materials. He made a phone call, and a young man showed up to take me to the paint store. I picked out wall paint in the colors I'd need (mostly greens and blues, with some ochre, sienna, gray and black), brushes of different sizes, and a few other things. We stopped at a craft store to get brushes for detail work and a better pencil. When we got back he had the wall clear and drop cloths down. I cleaned the wall and put down a coat of primer. While that dried I worked on my sketches. Then I sketched out the whole thing on the wall, got his final approval, and set to work. Late that night I signed my work to the applause of his patrons. There was detail were it was needed, but mostly it was broad strokes to suggest a murky underwater scene. He hadn't asked about a price until now. I said whatever he thought it was worth. He said he couldn't afford that. I named a figure that covered my time. He gave me three times that.

I was tired and had forgotten to eat, so I sat down with a slice of Curried Pumpkin Pie. I looked at my work. Other people were looking at it and liked it. They were surprised I could do it in one day. So was I. Someone else was looking at it. Someone was seeing it in a way that was different from the rest of us. I gradually became aware of this and then realized I didn't understand it. He saw it from far away in an unusual direction. He saw it with tables in front of it and with the colors faded, but somehow that was normal. The strange part seemed to be that he was also seeing it as I did. I was inside someone else's mind, like I used to pretend I was a bird or a fish. I hadn't done that since I was a child. He was human, but it wasn't a human mind. It was like the mind of a bird, or of that gecko. I had forgotten about the gecko. I stayed very still, as still as a goldfish, so he wouldn't know I was there. He was watching me paint, but I had finished painting. If I moved he would hear my thoughts the same way I heard his. No, that wasn't right. I couldn't hear his thoughts, I could only feel the reptile part of his brain that doesn't have words. He was doing something with time. Your life consists of everything you have ever done, everything you have ever thought, felt, or experienced. Who you are is what you do, which includes what you say, what you think, and how you feel. I saw myself as I never had and as I always did. The words don't make any sense, but words never do. I avoid them. They hide the truth. But the truth is a dangerous thing. As he watched me paint I heard the wall being built. I felt myself painting it. I saw changes made to the mural by accident and design. I sensed the building's demise and my work preserved in minds and images and forms that had no meaning to me. I saw that we have a lot less choice than we think we do and that the past is not immutable. I didn't know what that meant. This went on for all of time and then it was over. People were still eating and drinking and looking at my mural. I was alone inside my head. I whispered take care, time is even more complex than you think.

Chris was asleep when I got back to the room, so I crawled in beside him. But I was too wired to sleep. Painting had felt really good today, a great natural high. I hadn't even had a beer, just a contact high from everyone else drinking. Which made that drug flashback afterward even more disturbing. I had felt anxious ever since, and more so since getting back to the hotel. It did something to my head. Drawing and painting usually cleared my mind. Chris would be happy when I told him how much money I had been paid. He was always so pleased when I sold a painting. We had great sex afterward. I was tempted to wake him, but couldn't bring myself to do it. He looked like such an angel lying there with his light colored hair in his face. Tomorrow.

I was being chased by a big five hundred pound gorilla. He wanted to sleep with me. I kept running but couldn't get away. He was always right behind me. I couldn't scream. I couldn't say anything. I ran down the road between the buildings. I opened a car door and crawled inside to hide. He came in after me, rocking the car. I was going to die. Chris was there but couldn't do anything. He was frozen. There was a whole herd of gorillas. I hoped he didn't get hurt. There were seven of them.

That bastard! He had been charging people to have sex with me. Seven of them last night, except the first one was probably part of his drug deal. All those men he kept bringing back to the apartment. Two at a time. I think it had been only two. I must have screamed when I woke up. I was pacing around the bed in my underwear and shirt, and he was sitting up naked trying to figure out what was going on. I started yelling at him. He got up and hit me. I had never been hit before. I didn't like it. He threw another punch straight at me and it never landed. I caught his fist and held it. I had the best arm on the Little League team. He was a little taller but not much heavier. I hit him and knocked him back. I hurt my hand. He swung again. I blocked and hit him less hard. He shrugged it off. I didn't know how to fight, and he only knew how to bully. So I grabbed both his wrists and held one in each hand. He tried to pull loose but couldn't. He kicked me with his bare foot. I kneed him in the crotch. Then I knocked him over and sat on him. I tried to consider my options. If I took his drugs or money his contacts would come after me. Discipline would be his own problem. I could just leave. There wasn't anything here I wanted. So I pulled on my pants, picked up my backpack, and left.

When I got outside I walked until I had calmed down enough to think. I checked my pockets and found that the money from my painting was gone. The bastard had gone through my pockets while I was asleep. When I got back to the hotel, he and his car were gone. I didn't know what to do. I wandered the streets for a while, and then I found a pay phone and called my parents collect. I said I needed to come home. My mother got hysterical. My father got on the phone and asked where I was. I told him. He asked how much money I had. I said a few dollars. He said go to the bus station. There would be a ticket waiting for me at the counter. There was. I still don't know how he did it. When I got home my mother took me to see the priest. Two weeks later I was committed to a state mental institution.

A mind is a beautiful thing to waste. I liked the tranqs. They made me fuzzy, and they let me watch the birds outside without being afraid of being possessed. They were a mostly nice bunch of people in there, somewhat quieter and more weird than people on the outside, patients and staff both. One of them, a wispy little guy not much taller than me, was called Ice. He had blond hair and very pale blue eyes, and people thought he was an albino. When I had first gotten there one of the other patients had asked me if I was Hispanic. I said I was Portuguese, but because of the tranqs it came out Poryuese, so after that they all thought I was Polish. They called me Ski, which I sort of liked, except for Ice, who noticed that birds weren't afraid of me. He called me Ladyhawk, which didn't make sense because birds are afraid of hawks. I told him I was St Francis preaching to the birds. It was a joke. I told the doctor I used to pretend to be birds and fish, and he told me about escape mechanisms. At some point fish started following me around. They'd trail after me in a school when I walked and float around me in the air when I stopped. Mostly bluegill. I didn't mind. I found it entertaining when it happened. They didn't judge me, they were just there. Of course I never told the doctors or anyone else about them. In art therapy class I just drew colored shapes that looked like everyone else's. It was a mixed ward, although the men and women slept in different rooms, and at night people sometimes had sex in the bathtub. If the staff knew about it, they looked the other way. One of them, I never found out who, kept a secret supply of condoms in the back of a drawer that was never locked. The tub was fiberglass, so it wasn't as cold and hard as the cast iron tub in my parent's house. We didn't try to use our beds because the staff made rounds at night, and while most of the others on the ward probably wouldn't have minded people quietly fucking in the same room, some of them couldn't have dealt with it. I tried not to have more sex than other people. I didn't want to draw attention to myself.

This went on for what I later found out was almost two years. I didn't get any better and I didn't get any worse. Then they started cutting down my tranqs for some special tests. Ice told me to be careful. People had disappeared after the tests before. I said people sometimes left. He said this was different. People didn't remember the tests, but he knew they were unpleasant. They were all shaken up afterward. It had taken him days to get over them. He said I was one the good people. He'd lost other friends and didn't want to lose me. So I was nervous when an aid led me to the testing room. It didn't look much different from other hospital labs. There were machines and monitors and two men, a tall one in a white lab coat and one in a black suit and tie like in the movies. They had me strip down to my pubic hair in front of them and lie on a padded exam table. The suit strapped me down, and the doctor attached electrodes to my head and body. Then he gave me an injection. We waited. I started to feel an expanding brightness and tried to stay calm. Suddenly I felt a red hot spike in my gut. I convulsed, but the sensation was completely gone before I could scream. It just left a blank afterimage like a flash going off in my eyes. I had been expecting something but wasn't prepared. They were smiling. Their faces were still expressionless but I could feel them smiling. A jolt of pleasure had surged through both their bodies when the pain had surged through mine. They both had raging hard-ons, and the suit had creamed his pants. They got off on watching my naked body convulse with pain.

The suit started looking at some cards. The doctor asked me what I saw. An image of fire formed in my mind. I said the setting tropical sun. I felt another spike in my gut but this time it was only warm, unpleasant but not painful. The not pain was a relief. I felt their excitement at my answer. It was what they were looking for, even though I had lied. After a pause the doctor asked what I saw now. I saw the sun shining through a maple tree in full leaf but said a tall bottle of imported beer. They liked this answer too and I felt the not pain again. This wasn't going well. I wanted to fail this test. I needed to give them answers they didn't like. Another pause. This time I saw the ocean. I ignored all the other things I thought of and said a glass of water. I felt the red hot spike again and panted as I recovered from the pain. They didn't like this answer but couldn't help the excitement they felt when they saw me convulse. I needed to figure out what they wanted. Why had they liked the things I made up? This time I saw a dandelion. I thought of a traffic light changing, melting butter on pancakes, a goldfinch at a bird feeder, and lemon meringue pie. I thought no, it can't be that simple can it? I felt the pain when I didn't give an answer. The next time I saw a goldfish, thought of a school bus, and said a rose. I concentrated on their pleasure to counteract the pain. It felt slimy but helped. After that I gave mostly wrong answers. The actual images didn't matter. What they were looking for was colors. The colors of the image I saw and of the things I thought of were always the same. Whatever it was they were testing for, I had it. I failed the test spectacularly. I told Ice which answers they didn't like, and nobody else disappeared. I don't know why I remembered.

I decided I had to get out of this place. I asked my doctor not to put me back on tranqs. He was pleased. I had gotten over my fear and started flying with the birds again. I had missed it. They were pure and free, even when they hunted and killed. Some childish things should not be put away. I could sense the reptile part of the brain in humans when those near me had strong emotional or sensual experiences. I had first noticed it after I painted my mural in Baltimore, and the strangeness of that experience, along with what I had gone through with that abusing bastard, had scared and traumatized me. People are stupid, insane and evil. All of us, to one degree or another. It's called the human condition. I had to be strong to fight them. The doctors here thought they knew everything, and didn't even know what it was that they didn't know. I was not insane because I had thought I was a bird, I was insane because I thought I hadn't been. The truth is a dangerous thing. It can drive you mad, and it can set you free. It was the birds who had been preaching to St Francis. Ice was glad I was getting out. I told him he could too. We did he stay? He said he could help more people in here, and it wasn't such a bad place. He'd been in worse.

I didn't want to go back to the bakery after I got out. I tried working at a fast food seafood joint, but being around all those people eating fish made me uneasy. The chicken place would be no better. The pancake house wanted wait people with more experience and thought the bakery didn't count. So that left the burger place. I didn't care about cows. While I was sorting this out I looked up Jennifer. She was married and had a kid. She was happy to see me, but her husband was in middle management and we no longer had much in common. Melissa and Amy were into the lifestyle. I was no longer interested in sex with a bunch of people I barely knew. Angela was still a little taller than I was, and I still found that attractive. She had joined a pagan group of mostly women, and invited me to a meeting.

They met at Angela's apartment on the sunday or thursday nearest the night of the full moon, unless the moon was fullest tuesday night, in which case they met then. So people had the other nights of the week and usually tuesday for other things, and they were still always within one day of the full moon. The High Priestess wanted to have around thirteen people at the meetings, and since not everyone made it to all of them, the total membership was nearly twice that. Angela said they sometimes went naked but not usually. It was just as well. I noticed a considerably larger age range than our old group, from late adolescence to early retirement. Their ritual was something like the ones we had gotten out of books, without the added sex play. Candles, bowl, sacred knife, holding hands in a circle, invocation, sitting on the carpet, prayers, guided meditation, return, blessing, snacks, discussion, socializing. Comfortable, nothing exciting, a nice support network. After my second visit I asked to join and was accepted.

I invited Angela over to my studio slash apartment for diner and told her I intended to seduce her. She said good, it would save her the trouble. And anyway it was my turn, she had done it last time. Sometimes I went out with boys I liked but didn't let things get too serious. I hoped this would be something more. I made Simple Lasagna. It was my own recipe.

2 C rotini, cooked and coated with 1 T olive oil, 1/8 t salt
half and half
cheddar
spaghetti sauce, pepper, basil
mozzarella
cottage cheese
parmesan

Oil 1 1/2 quart casserole with olive oil.
Layer:
1. rotini, some half and half, cheddar
2. spaghetti sauce, pepper, basil, mozzarella
3. cottage cheese, parmesan
4. rotini, cheddar
5. spaghetti sauce, pepper, basil, mozzarella
Cover and microwave for 2 minutes.
Cook at 350 for 20 minutes, let sit for 10 minutes.
Uncover and cool for 10 minutes.

I served it to Angela with a bottle of St Pauli Girl. It was a bit crowded with two of us at my dinette table. Afterward I put some Chopin Nocturnes on the CD player and we moved over a couple feet to the sofa, which was actually my bed. The apartment was small, and I used most of it as my studio. I played with her knee through her jeans for a while and waited. Eventually she got impatient and leaned over and kissed me. I kissed her back. Thoroughly. We'd done this before, but that was a long time and many lovers ago. Now we knew what we were doing. I undid her jeans. She pulled up her shirt and undid her bra. Her breasts looked wonderful and her nipples were still dark red. I cupped one of her breasts with my hand and ran my thumb gently over the nipple. She expressed her appreciation. I leaned down and stroked the nipple with my tongue. Heaven. I sucked it into my mouth. She gasped and squirmed, so I held on to her. I moved back up and slid my hand into her pants. I'd never fingered her with her jeans on before. A couple minutes later I pulled off her jeans and underwear. While she took off her shirt and bra, I took off my own jeans. I stood and looked at her lying there naked looking up at me expectantly. Pubic hair is so damned sexy. I don't understand why so many women shave most or all of theirs off. I blame it on Playboy. For years they refused show it and made their models shave. The first artist to show pubic hair was Klimt in 1899. It was just an orange blur, but it was obviously there. It scandalized everyone even though nude paintings without hair had been okay for millennia. The instinctual human response to unruly female pubic hair frightens a lot of people. I combed hers with my fingers. She spread her legs a little. I pushed them apart farther and buried my face in her wetness. Her odor excited me. I parted her lips and licked up the length. I sucked her clitoris into my mouth and played with it with my tongue. I felt the muscles inside the buttocks I held bunch and relax as she pumped against me. I heard her moans. I slipped a finger into her and pressed her G spot toward my mouth. I slowed down so she wouldn't come yet. She moaned in ecstasy and frustration. I held her there for an infinite moment, then let her come. She spasmed and grunted. I knew once wasn't enough so I did her again, and then again. I crawled up beside her and held her as she panted. Then I slipped off my shirt, bra and underwear. When she was ready she slid down and did me. I only had a twin bed so it was a little crowded sleeping.

After a year at the burger place I got job at a movie theatre. Angela was happy for me. I started out on concessions and ticket taking, but moved over to selling tickets when I got the chance. I liked sitting in the glass booth and looking out at people. It reminded me of the pet store I had liked as a child. Some of the big budget movies came with special displays for the lobby. I asked the manager if I could do displays for some of the foreign or art films or the retrospectives. He talked to corporate, got a (very) small budget, and said okay. So I worked on sketches when the ticket booth wasn't busy and did a large picture with Marseilles in the background for a French movie set there, a surrealistic cityscape for an art film, and a samurai in a Japanese village for the Toshiro Mifune festival. Some people liked my displays. Occasionally someone would ask who did them and want to see some of my other work. I made a few sales.

My trances worried Angela. My family had apparently just assumed I was weird. I told her I did species change when I meditated, like the rituals I had written for our old group. She knew there was something I wasn't telling her and still worried, but trusted me enough to let it drop. I trusted her but was afraid to tell her about my experiences. They had contributed to my isolation and drug dependency and been the cause of my insanity. I had learned to accept them and handle them, but I didn't want to expose her to something that could cause her harm. I talked to people in our current group about their experiences and told them about parts of mine. They were interested, and I led some rituals. I read in books about pagans and shamans undergoing species change. All the books insisted that the experiences were real, but they didn't sound real to me. They weren't like what I did. I didn't become a separate independent animal or go through a physical change. I shared the awareness of an existing animal. We merged to some extent, but I was aware of my own identity. My own interests and desires bled through, but if I tried to influence them too much they got confused and frightened. I didn't want to harm them. I shared the animal's own sense of self-preservation. It worked best when I just let them be.

The next fall I decide to go on a retreat to learn more about what I did. I'd read about shamanic retreats in the books. I knew I wouldn't have to starve myself to have a vision. I borrowed a tent, took a few days off work, hoped my car would hold together, and headed out to a remote area in the state forest. It was hunting season, but the ones who came out this far knew what they were doing. The idiots stayed closer to home. The birds would warn me of large animals, and I could sense snakes. The whole way hiking in I could feel the birds around me. In the open I could sense birds within four hundred feet. In the woods it was less, in dense woods sometimes as little as one hundred twenty feet. I had learned from birds and from my art to estimate distances accurately. I felt a moving hemisphere of birds around me as I walked that contracted and expanded and changed shape depending on how close together the trees were. I heard a red tailed hawk screech, but he was beyond my range. A little later I heard some crows call and could sense them out beyond the hemisphere. I stopped and listened. When I paid attention, I could sense another larger and sparser circle of the birds I could hear that went out to thirteen hundred feet. I started walking again. When the stream that the trail followed was close enough I could sense fish. I stopped again and worked my way over to a large pool. I looked across the surface and couldn't see anything, but I felt where each individual trout waited below. I made my way along the bank and melted into the depths to avoid the loud moving shadow above. I felt my footsteps as vibrations through the water. The fish moved out of and into range as my position changed. In the still pool a could feel them to three hundred feet, in more turbulent water to two hundred. Although the distances varied, the cut off was always sharp. I could either sense something or I couldn't, but I could tell when something I sensed was close to the edge. If I wanted, I could go with it and then stay with it for any distance, but I couldn't sense or jump to anything else while I was another creature.

I arrived at the backwoods site I had selected and set up my tent, glad I had practiced setting it up before I left. It wasn't going to be cold enough even at this elevation that I would need a fire, and I'd brought nothing I needed to cook. You are supposed to boil water from streams before drinking it, but you're also not supposed to hike alone. Even so, I'd brought matches just in case, along with my knife and some thin rope. My largest item was my sleeping bag, and I had a small sketchpad and pencil and flashlight. When I finished setting up camp, I sat on the ground with my eyes closed and watched the birds. The ground leapt and plunged beneath me. I was a chickadee perched on a swaying twig. I worked my way up a branch looking for insects to eat. I was a red bellied woodpecker hammering on a trunk. I knew there was something in there. I could almost taste it. I was a yellow billed cuckoo, a bird I'd read about but never been, searching the canopy for caterpillars. I tried to bring him close enough for me to see him but couldn't. Later that night I went with a barred owl that flew by. I flew along the ridge and perched on one of the upper branches of a tall red oak overlooking the swamp. I had a good view of anything that moved out there in the moonlight. Which was all well and fine, until the tree I was in started to talk to itself. I couldn't make out words. I never could, even when birds heard people talk. They don't have that part of the brain. But oak trees don't have brains at all, at least most of them don't. Part of it was disoriented, and the other part was concerned. I stayed very still. It seemed to recover. The tree was very aware of itself and its surroundings. There was a feeling of vibrating metal and a gust of breeze, and the tree was just a tree again. I didn't know what to make of it so I didn't worry about it. It didn't seem to have anything to do with me.

I spent another day out there sketching and listening. After the dusk chorus began, I could sense more and more birds. As it got darker and they quieted down, I lost the ones farther away. I sat and waited. I was a spotted salamander emerging from under a rock. I tasted the air for crickets, slugs and millipedes. I stayed in the moistness beneath the leaf litter of the forest floor as I hunted. As it got later, more salamanders emerged. Now that I knew what to look for, I could sense those nearby. Some appeared as they came out from under rocks that had shielded them from me. One appeared thirty feet away when it came out from under a very large rock. I don't know how far away I could sense those in the open because there weren't any. Those under leaves I could sense at one hundred eighty to one hundred twenty feet, depending in how deep the leaf cover was. I headed home the following afternoon. On my hike out I checked quiet parts of the stream for newts and found some hanging in the water or moving across the bottom. Angela was glad I made it back safely.

I had been working at the movie theatre for two years when a man asked me about a display with an underwater scene. I'd had a lot of practice drawing fish and had done a good job on it. He came to my studio slash apartment afterward and bought a drawing of a swan with its wings spread and its neck bent that was also a crouching woman in a white one piece bathing suit. He also bought one of an octopus stalking a blue crab. A week later I got a call from Jose. The man, Stephen, had shown the drawings to his friend Karen and told her about the Portuguese artist. Jose had told her about me previously, but it took her a while to make the connection. Jose and I caught up some, and he invited me for diner with his friends. I drove up on my next day off.

Jose closed the apartment door and wrapped himself around me. My knee came up automatically as I felt him thrust against me, and I gripped him tightly. Our tongues churned as our lips ground against each other, his hands flowing like water over me, then I leaned back to look into his dark Brazilian eyes. I guess we'd had similar fantasies. He ran his hands through my short black hair and said he was sorry for the way he had walked out. No explanation, no excuses, just a straight out apology. I had never gotten one of those before. He had always been direct. I smiled and said I still loved him, but my feelings were confused. He said ah. Of course he understood. That was the sort of person he was. He introduced me to his partners. Linda was short and a little heavy with short red hair. Judy was slim and Asian. Paul was a tall black man. Mark moved like a heron. I said partners? Jose said it wasn't complicated. They were all more or less married to each other. It was called polyamory. I said ah. He knew I understood. Stephen was there with two of his partners. Diane was a pretty black woman who moved like a cat. She scared me. Leon was an amateur artist who was interested in my work. Linda had made rice and beans with broccoli, peas and corn. Mark made a salad with romaine, zucchini, mushrooms and sprouts. Judy had found a glazed orange olive oil cake at a bakery. We all drank water.

As we ate they told me their theories about care, responsibility, respect and knowledge. All of them were needed to make a relationship work. Care needed to be part of all forms of love, but you also needed to accept responsibility for your actions and inactions and realize they had consequences. You couldn't do either if you didn't respect someone's person, emotions, and ideas, even a child's and even if you didn't agree with all of them, and you couldn't do this if you didn't listen and pay attention and have a good knowledge of who they were. I agreed with them and asked if their groups were closed. Linda said most of them had outside relationships. I asked where they found the time. She said it did take time to get to know someone, but it was amazing how much time could be saved by getting rid of jealousy, games, and talking in code. I said I hadn't thought of that. Afterward Jose played guitar with Judy on violin and Mark on flute. Then Paul joined the other two on piano while Jose and I danced. I was out of practice but it was fun.

While my feelings about Jose were confused, Stephen was another matter. A week later I called him and said I liked what I had heard. Did he have time to go out with me? He said yes. So he came down, and I took him to the bakery for lunch. Everyone was happy to see me. My mother said he seemed like a nice young man. The two key words were nice and man. Since that didn't scare him off, after wandering around the streets for a while I took him back to my apartment. I told him about Angela. He told me about his other relationships. I told him about being in a mental institution. He told me about his Greek military service. There were similarities. I made Simple Lasagna, we made out some, and he went home. So far so good.

The next week I drove up there, and we went to the new exhibit at the art museum and looked around the city. At dinner I met his other partners. Karen was a confident woman who was a little taller than Diane with slightly smaller breasts and hips. I spite of their differences they looked a lot alike. Frank was sandy haired and soft spoken and somewhat older than the others. Leon had made Pad Thai. While we ate Stephen told me Karen and Frank and he shared this apartment and Diane and Leon had another one, although where the men slept was fluid and sometimes they all stayed here. After dinner Stephen got his guitar and Karen got out her flute. He hadn't told me he played. They sat on the floor and played Jethro Tull and Thelonious Monk and John Mayall. They were good, but he didn't play as well as Jose. Everyone hugged and kissed me before I left.

I told Angela what was going on. She asked if she had anything to be worried about. I said no. A few days later Linda visited our pagan group. They thought she was nice. She thought they were sensible. Stephen came down again the next week, and I served him broiled white fish and potatoes with natas from the bakery. I ate fish sometimes but not often. Fish, squid, prawns and shellfish were a large part of Portuguese food. I mentioned this, and he said he liked scallops and crab but never ate squid or octopus. Afterward we sat on the sofa and talked some. When I started playing with his knee he leaned forward and kissed me. I used both hands to open his fly and reached inside. I put the other arm back around him, and we kept kissing. I ran my hand over the smooth surface of his bikini briefs and felt the solid length of his bulging penis underneath. I stroked the sensitive spot at the base. I caressed his testicles and squeezed them gently. He felt a trickle of cum make its way to the base of his penis, move slowly up the shaft, and ooze out the opening at the top. I rubbed the wet spot it created on his briefs with my thumb. When I shared a woman's sensations it was as if I were feeling them in my own body. A man's sensations of this part of his body still felt very alien to me. They were something like what a woman felt but arranged much differently. Birds and fish don't have penises. Ducks and swans have something that's called a penis, which is why there are myths of humans and gods becoming swans, but it's not the same. He slid out of his clothes. I admired him for a few moments. He looked healthy. Then I stood up and looked at him as I slowly undid the buttons of my shirt, one by one. I pulled it out of my jeans. I opened it up, slid my arms out, and dropped it to the floor. I reached behind me and undid my bra, slid the straps off my shoulders, lifted it off my breasts, and dropped it. I turned a little to show off my breasts. I reached down and unbuttoned my jeans. I unzipped them, pulled them down over my hips to reveal my own bikini briefs beneath, leaned forward to lower and step out of them, and kicked them aside. I paused and felt his eyes sliding over different parts of me. I held them as I hooked my thumbs into the sides of my briefs, and lost them as I slowly straightened my elbows. I squatted slightly so I could lower my briefs without bending forward, lifted my knees and feet out of them, and dropped them on the rest of my clothes.

Cum was oozing out of his penis again. I knelt down and licked it off, savoring it as I swallowed. I sucked the top into my mouth and slowly swirled my tongue around it. I held the shaft with my hand and stroked gently, pressing my thumb into the underside. His head tilted back and his eyes half closed. We stood up so I could pull back the covers. I repositioned him and unrolled a condom onto him. Then I placed a knee by either of his hips, lined him up, and slowly lowered myself onto his penis. He filled me up. It's a cliche, but that's what he did. I felt him sliding inside me, in and out. I pressed into his crotch at the bottom of each stroke. He watched himself disappearing into me and my breasts bobble with each bounce. My large dark areolae behind either of my swollen nipples covered a significant portion of each one. He started to roll me onto my side, but we had to scoot over so as not to hit the wall. No sense in disturbing the neighbors more than we had to. I held one knee up as he thrust into me. It wasn't a very workable position. I pulled him onto me as I rolled onto my back. We shifted away from the wall again. Now I had both knees in the air and thrust up to meet him each time he hit home. I moaned and held on to him as the sensation built. It kept on building, and then I clung to him desperately as I spasmed and grunted out my orgasm. We kept going and soon I came again. And then I was skimming across the surface with continual orgasms, some more intense than others. I could feel Stephen's excitement and pleasure and lack of surprise at what was happening. He held himself close to the edge without letting himself go over. He knew what he was doing. I didn't want it to stop. But when I started to tire he loosened his control. I felt his excitement increasing, and then I felt the cum moving inside him again, faster this time, swirling through his gut, racing up his penis, and spritzing out into me as he gasped and shook.

A month later Leon called me and asked if I wanted to manage the Tao Book Muffin. I said huh? He said it was a used book store out in the woods near the college area. He used to help out there part time for credit, and the owner had left it to him when he died. It was a one person operation and didn't make much money, but he could keep it open if he found the right person. It had been around a long time and had a loyal customer base. Was I interested? I said um. He said I could think about it. He'd give Stephen a copy of the key for me, and I could drive out and look at it if I wanted. It sounded like it might be a good opportunity. I told Angela she could start worrying.

The next week she and I made the two and a half hour drive to take a look. It looked weird. The building had three sides. I walked around it to make sure. It was a triangle with the corners cut off. I'd been warned but hadn't really believed it. We went up the steps to the door. Inside it was worse. Except for a bathroom and storage area off to the side, the thing was one huge lopsided three story spiral. It made my dizzy. The rooms were five sided platforms that were separated by a few steps. Some of them overlooked others. One room near the bottom could be used as a stage and had a room on either side and two that looked down on it. One room was a small cafe area with a tiny kitchen. One a little higher up was a huge bay window. Another was an art gallery. I opened a door near the top and found an outside stairway leading up to three more platforms on the roof. And of course there were bookshelves everywhere. Angela thought it was cool. She said I had to take the job so she could come and visit me here. She had plans for me and that bay window and the moonlight and some of those different colored floor cushions we saw scattered around. I said right.

I did take the job. Angela decided she wasn't so sure about this after all. I said long distance relationships were hard, but it would work because we'd make it work. It wasn't that far, and I'd be just as far from Stephen. I could drive down here and she could drive up there. We'd work out a schedule. She brought up my fear of telephones. I always had trouble talking and understanding what people said, and telephones made it worse. I couldn't see who I was talking to and get the visual cues I needed, and voices always sounded fuzzy over the phone. I said it would be a problem, but we had dealt with it so far. We could continue to deal with it.

I arrived with everything I owned piled into my car. There was a shed out back with a bed where I could sleep until it got too cold. The bathroom and kitchen were in the main building. About that kitchen. It was a bookstore cafe, but since they got all the food they served from a bakery, donut shop, or supermarket, the kitchen area only had a bar sink, small fridge, microwave, and coffee machine. There was no stove, so I added a toaster and a hot plate. People were glad when the place reopened. I was surprised how many showed up the first day. Leon had taken time off work so he could get me started. Angela and Stephen and Karen were there too. My mother was there with lots of stuff from the bakery for the cafe. We'd set up extra cafe seating on the deck outside and on the roof. We immediately ran out of plates and cups, but I'd gotten paper ones. My mother organized friends and volunteers into an impromptu wait staff. I had my own work as the first exhibition in the gallery. We did good business. Everyone wanted us to succeed, and there was a backlog of books people had thought about getting while the place was closed. It looked like this might work.

Leon's drawings were next in the gallery. After that we had patrons and local artists lined up. I kept some of my paintings on display in the cafe area. Business slowed down after a while but was still good. Sometimes a volunteer helped out for store credit. Sometimes we had concerts. I joined a pagan group with some good people that started meeting at the bookstore after hours. When it got cold I moved inside and slept on the floor cushions. Usually I slept on the bottom level near where I stored my bedding, but sometimes I moved up to the bay window, where Angela's plan had turned out to be excellent, or the top level where I could hear the wind chimes on the roof. Once Stephan and I had slept on the roof underneath the stars. There were lots of birds in the woods outside, and lots of things to draw nearby, but I missed having a studio where I could leave things set up. Sometimes the fish came to visit me.

One tuesday a year and a half after I started working here we scheduled a concert with Linda's group, Polymorphous. This time it had Judy on fiddle, Mark on flute, Jose on guitar, Eliska on Cello, and Kamau on African drum. They played mostly Celtic music and Linda sang. They had left the city after work and arrived shortly before performance time. There was no sound system to set up, and the books behind them and along the walls would absorb sound, but it wasn't a very big space. A few stage lights hung in front of the levels that overlooked the stage area. While they were getting ready I talked to Parveen, a woman Kamau had met a couple months ago. She said she had come here from Iraq to go to college and then stayed. Karen, Stephen and Diane arrived with Owl, and Stephen introduced her. She was a short brown haired woman who was his other lover. She had been wanting to meet me, but it was a long drive and with one thing and another, she hadn't before now. I said I felt like I already knew her. A few minutes later Diane took me aside. She told me she and Karen were three months pregnant, and Stephen and Paul were the fathers, respectively. She hadn't let Stephen tell me because she wanted to do it herself. I nearly squealed, but I don't do that, and said congratulations and hugged her.

There was a good crowd for such a small space. The opening act started with Mark and Karen playing a couple Telemann sonatas for two flutes, opus two numbers five and two. People say to live in the moment, that the past and the future don't really exist. If that were true, music would not be possible. Change and duration are what music is. In the moment that we experience, it doesn't exist. The first flute starts at a slow walking pace with three rising and two falling notes then jumps upward. Do do Do do do Doo. As the note is held the second flute enters the same way but jumps to a higher note. Do do Do do do Doo! The first flute starts downward, then the second. The first pauses. The second repeats a little higher then jumps to a slightly lower note than before. The first echoes and jumps to the highest note yet. They walk around each other. The second pauses, steps, pauses longer, and continues. They continue in their mating dance, circling and pausing and stepping, moving upward and downward. They pause together, continue, slow, and stop. The second movement is livelier, the next graceful, and the final movement fast. There was much applause. Flute music by Telemann was often heard as background music in the store, and people appreciated hearing one of his works live. The next piece was similar.

There was a pause while chairs were moved around, then Judy and Eliska were joined by Grace on first violin and Jeremiah on viola for Beethoven's third string quartet. Since all of them except Judy were in a symphony orchestra and weren't really supposed to be playing with other groups, they used pseudonyms and Eliska wore sunglasses. They had concerts on weekends, which was why this one was on a tuesday. Paul and Judy and Mark had started a chamber music group with Eliska and Jeremiah. Grace had joined last month. I couldn't keep track of all the names and faces. I decided to worry about it later. The first violin starts with two long notes, the second one jumping upward not quite an octave. Then the first violin dances around a little, but mostly everyone plays long notes. The viola plays the solo rising notes and dances a little, the second violin tries to, then everyone else stops while the first violin swirls downward. They play together for a bit, the cello has a solo passage, they keep going, and the movement ends with some briefly held chords. The next movement is a little slower, the next short and in fast triple time, and the last is a long and very fast movement where they toss stuff around.

More people showed up for the featured act. They began with a song about a selkie that everyone seemed to know and like. I noticed a nice looking black man watching me and smiled at him, but didn't think anything of it. He worked his way over and said he was Max, Diane's brother, and was happy to meet me. We shook hands. He seemed amused and somehow familiar, but I knew Max was still in prison. I said I was confused. Before he could reply, Owl came over and joined us. I looked at the two of them together and got more confused. I felt like this had all happened before. I asked didn't they use to be an oak tree? Owl hesitated and looked at Max, then said she had at various times. What was I referring to specifically? I had never told anyone about what I could do without cloaking it in pagan talk about species change, not the doctors and not even Angela, but I told them about being an owl in an oak tree that talked to itself. She said she remembered that. It was the first time she had taken Max out into the green. I said that explain his disorientation. She said she remembered the owl because she had gotten her name from a barred owl. She told me she could talk to plants the same way I could talk to birds. I felt dizzy and said I needed to sit down. She looked concerned and said they needed to talk to me, so we circled around to the top level and found some floor cushions. I stopped to get a water bottle on the way. When I had recovered a little she asked why we hadn't met and discovered each others abilities before. I said I didn't know. But when I thought about it, it seemed to have something to do with time. I could sort of see it in my mind, but when I tried to put it into words it disappeared. She said not to worry about it. If it had to do with time we would find out about it later.

She said she needed to call Thom. I expected her to use a phone, but she didn't. Thom didn't just suddenly appear, but one moment he wasn't there, and the next he had been sitting there the whole time. I felt like I should be surprised, but I wasn't. She felt that whatever had been keeping us apart before now needed us to be together. I understood, but it's not something that fits into words. She said Max and Thom and she were a poly group. It had been larger but some people had left. Max could be with them in the dreaming when he was asleep in his cell, as he was now. Most people here couldn't see him, but I could. That was why she had admitted being a tree. I said ah. She said well, that and the fact that I was family. She could share awareness with plants and insects and other invertebrates. She could travel through the green and take others with her in the dreaming or if they could share awareness. Thom could share awareness with people as I could with birds, and he could form groups. He had to be near people to do this, except he and Owl could contact each other from a distance. Max was aware of metals and crystals and other matter down to the atomic level. I asked if there was something special about vibrating metal. He said yes, he played the kalimba, a thumb piano. I asked him how he could work his way through a crowd if they couldn't see or feel him? And did he need to? He said if people weren't paying attention they had enough awareness of him to automatically let him by. And he couldn't be here if he didn't match his dream form to the real world as closely as possible. I told them about the fish, reptiles and amphibians. Somewhere in the middle of all this Max said excuse me and blinked away, then blinked back. He said he'd had to stand up for evening count. I said all this blinking in and out was making me dizzy again. Thom told me he could link three or five minds together. With four the energies didn't balance properly, but he had learned to maintain three people in a link while he looked on from outside. He asked if he could add me to the link they were sharing now? I said yes without giving myself time to be afraid.

I could hear their thoughts. There had never been words when I shared awareness or even in my dreams, but now there were. I could only see their surface thoughts, but it was enough to understand what Owl had been trying to explain to me about what they could do. And now I had all the names and faces of the people I had just met that they already knew. That was convenient. I found it overwhelming and after a few minutes stepped out of the link. I finally knew I wasn't crazy. Others could to this sort of thing. It didn't hurt people. I said I needed to tell Angela about us, and show her what I had been hiding if I could. Owl said yes with no pause, but within that no pause they had seriously discussed among themselves what that meant and implied for them and had come to an agreement. I heard them even though I wasn't in the link. They didn't use words. Words don't work that fast, even inside the mind. They had done it emotionally and instinctually. They had used the reptile part of the brain, and I could hear them. I said thank you the same way. This time there was a pause. It was Thom. He had never met anyone who could come this close to doing what he could do. I felt his thrill of amazement and surge of pure joy. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Suddenly he was not alone. I joined their group. It was sort of sudden but we thought we'd see how things worked out. We didn't consummate our relationship that night. Stephen was visiting, and besides, I wanted to be with Thom physically when we did, even if I couldn't with Max. When Thom left he disappeared quite slowly, beginning with his feet and ending with just his smile. I was amused. Angela took it well. She was happy for me and we stayed together. She was glad I finally told her the truth about my trances.

A few days later Owl and Thom appeared in the store while I was sorting books. Even though I had been expecting them, at first they felt like customers whom I hadn't noticed when I locked up. I noted that Thom was dark haired and looked a little younger than Owl and Max. Since I can't recognize faces, I try to remember a person's general appearance. It had bothered me that I couldn't remember Thom's. He said he was sorry, it was his fault. A side affect of his ability made him to some degree invisible. If he wasn't paying attention to someone they tended to forget about him, and when he wasn't there people tended not to remember him. It was too early for Max to be asleep so he wasn't with them. There was something Owl wanted to try. Spring sunlight was slanting through the clouds and dappling the ground as we made our way through the trees to the small river behind the property. We found a spot with a clear view of the water and sat on the leaves. I felt both of them in my head as Thom linked us together. I was a brook trout holding position in the water behind a rock. I stayed out of the current to save energy but close enough to catch anything edible that came by. Another trout about my size was sheltering behind the same rock. There was enough room that I didn't need to try to drive him off, but I didn't like it. I made little runs at him when he got too close, but gave most of my attention to feeding.

I could feel Owl's excitement. She was bouncing up and down where she sat. Her underwear was damp. She had always wanted to be a fish. Now she had. She could be a diving beetle or dragonfly nymph or water strider, but fish had always been beyond her. She wanted to go again, try something else. I said there were only a few other small fish in range. I had to explain that I couldn't go from one creature to another. She was surprised. She could go from plant to plant and travel as far as she liked. I guess I had known that after learning she was the oak tree, but I hadn't thought about it. She said let's try it. Going from a plant to a fish might be different, and anyway three people working together were much more powerful than one. They reinforced each other. So Thom reformed the link, she asked if I was ready, and we stepped out into the green. It was, I don't know what it was, but astounding, amazing, and exhilarating were part of it. I'd had no idea. We were a hickory tree reaching up into the sky and down into the earth. We were a series of hemlock trees near the water's edge. We were a laurel thicket arching out over the stream. We raced downstream along the river, flowing from plant to plant, feeling no wind of our passage. We reached the small river's extremity and leapt. We were a green cloud of algae spread out and drifting with the current of the main river. I paused to reorient myself, and then reached out. I was a brown bullhead catfish moving along the bottom through the cloudy and darkening water, sweeping my barbels from side to side, thrusting them into the gravel and under rocks, tasting and listening for anything that moved. I found small fish, snails, insects, worms, and the occasional crayfish. I gulped them down, spitting out pieces of gravel.

When we were gathered back at the bookstore, I said sharing consciousness was as intense and exciting as sex. Thom said that in some ways it was even more intimate and had some of the same functions, such as bonding and sharing. I said the pagan group I'd been in when young had used ritual sex magic to create a bond strong enough that we hadn't wanted to let anyone else in. Which was just as well since a newcomer might have upset the stability of the group. Others had initiated the group, but rituals appeal to the reptile brain, and I might have had more to do with keeping it going than I realized. Thom said all people share thoughts and emotions on some level, and I probably just reinforced what was already happening. We started talking about the reptile brain. It controls dominance and aggression, anxiety and excitement, territory and sex. These are necessary and part of being alive, but people are more than that, or should be. At one point Owl said excuse me and disappeared. She returned a few minutes later with Max. Since she couldn't contact him from a distance she'd had to travel through the green. He asked me about the fish. I said they were bluegill. He said ah. Owl hadn't seen them, and Thom said he saw lots of strange things from people's minds. I said I had something I wanted to ask Thom. I had figured out a long time ago that there was something wrong with my brain. I couldn't talk or remember. I had never experienced the clarity a normal human brain until Thom had let me share awareness with all of them. Maybe it wasn't just that no one had talked to me when I was young. Could he find out what my problem was? He hesitated. I said I knew it was a lot to ask. He said he didn't know if he could, but he was willing to try if I was willing to take the risk. I said please.

Thom knew a great deal about what the mind looked and felt like from the inside. Actually he said he worked primarily from odor, but I had no idea what that meant. Owl knew about anatomy. Max could taste neurons and the connections between them. I had some experience of the problem. It would take all of us working together. Thom created the image of a tiny vessel to carry us and flew it up my nose. He said it was the easiest way. We navigated into my sinuses, pretended to be an oxygen molecule, and were absorbed directly into the brain's blood supply. I said I didn't know the sinuses did that. Owl said nobody did, it wasn't in any of the scientific literature. It was why people got sinus headaches. She'd tried but hadn't found a way to get anyone to believe the things they'd learned. Thom headed for the pattern recognition portion of my brain, Max scanned it when we got there, and Owl couldn't believe what he showed her. It wasn't working. The cells were alive, but that whole section of the brain was shut down. She had Max show her different parts and studied them carefully, comparing them to what she had learned from other brains. She found damaged tissue and decided that the brain had shut down this section of itself to prevent its impaired functioning from interfering with other parts. I asked how could I survive without pattern recognition? She said I couldn't, and Thom said I wasn't. He could see it happening somewhere. Owl thought she knew where, and Thom headed us down through the corpus callosum to the corresponding location on the other side of the brain. We had found the problem. The two hemispheres of the brain are similar but not the same. Some sections of either side have specialized in different ways. I was using a backup section of my brain that worked, but not the same way. My experience of reality was different. I had to figure things out instead of instantly recognizing patterns of words, numbers and faces. And the longer routing between sections that should be adjacent caused information loss and delay. It was why I couldn't understand words easily, but also why I was good in math. Sometimes pattern recognition is wrong. Usually it doesn't matter much, but in math it does. I didn't make the wrong initial assumptions that others didn't realize they did. I was used to figuring everything out step by step. It also affected my art. While I couldn't remember what I saw, I saw more clearly what was in front of me.

We came back out the other nostril, and I thanked everyone but said I had another question. Thom said of course I did. I wanted to know what caused the damage. He said he could see how that would be important to me. I said we could wait till another time to go searching through my memories. He said no, I had a nice head, he wouldn't mind looking more closely at it. I was the one who might have difficulty. We raided the cafe for left over baked goods. I watched Max pick up and eat a muffin that also stayed on the plate. I thought it was a neat trick. He said yeah, but in an hour he'd be hungry again. We sat back down on our cushions, and Thom dispensed with the imagery this time. Owl could tell from the way the damage had been repaired about when it had happened. I lay back. Owl and Max were on either side of me. Thom started talking softly inside my head and I floated in the darkness. My throat hurt. I was too young to know what was happening except my throat hurt and someone was leaning over me. I went away. I opened my eyes to three concerned faces. I asked what happened, and could I have a drink of water? Owl got me one, and they told me I had passed out. I said oh. Thom said he could find the exact time by when my memories changed. He asked me what could I remember? My eyes got wide and I started to choke. Owl got behind me and rubbed my shoulders and told me to take deep breaths. I did. I said it was my brother. He was leaning over me and he was choking me. It wasn't the first time he had done it. He'd tried other stuff, but choking kept me quiet and didn't leave marks if he was careful. This time I had gone too long without oxygen. One of the most delicate parts of the brain had been damaged beyond even an infant's ability to repair it, and drastic measures had been taken. He would have been only three at the time and wouldn't really have known what he was doing. He just knew that this thing nobody seemed to like much was getting all the attention. Some of this I figured out from what I had seen, some Thom had picked up, and some I guessed at from what I already knew and could see differently now. It explained why my throat hurt when I talked. Owl and Max confirmed there was damage there as well. My mother seemed to know that something had happened but not what. She watched me more carefully and started taking me to the bakery with her when she thought I was old enough.

When they came back a few days later I said I had another idea. I got three blank stares. I decided to interpret this as enthusiasm. I was limited by brains being too advanced. I'd tried sensing mammals and gotten nothing. Thom was aware of people. Had he tried sensing creatures that were less advanced? The word advanced didn't make any sense, creatures are whatever they are. But it was the best I had. He said yes. He had traveled to a zoo one time to see if he could sense the thoughts of any of the animals. He'd started with the primates. The apes had been aware of what he was doing and didn't like it. The monkeys had been confused until they had gotten used to him. The cats and hooved animals had been opaque. He had stayed with humans after that. They didn't pay attention. I said good, that sounded promising. Max asked if I had any more muffins. I said I thought so. I persisted as we sat at a cafe table that wasn't large enough. I asked Owl what was the closest animal to primates? She said squirrels. I said duh. Then I said the squirrels were all asleep. What about other rodents? She said she had no idea. I said I could find some mice. I told them how I had first become aware of fish and birds when I fed them some of what I was eating. I asked what mice ate most of. She said nuts, seeds and beetles. I said I had some sunflower seeds, and got them. I could tell Thom didn't think this would work and was doing it mostly to humor me, but he was a little curious.

We sat on the cushions, Thom set up the link, and Owl took us out into the woods. I was a small red screech owl perched part way out on a low branch in a red cedar. I watched the dark glade below. The old moon wouldn't rise until later. I waited and tried to keep a lookout for great horned owls. I watched a striped skunk forage by and waited for it to leave. It sought the same things I did. I caught and crunched a stray moth. Finally I saw movement below. I waited until I was sure of my prey, then powered forward and struck. I missed and flew back to my perch. I could feel Thom reaching out. I was a panting white footed mouse sheltering in some dead leaves under a thicket of dogwood. I watched the owl on its perch. Soon it flew off. I climbed into the dogwood looking for berries from last year but didn't find anything. I searched around on the ground and a little way off found some half buried hickory nuts. I gnawed them open and extracted the meat. After a great deal of nosing around I found a centipede and a slow moving beetle under some leaves, and a small sleeping grasshopper out in the grass. Then I heard the chirp of a field cricket. I followed the sound, swam across a dark forest pool, and scented it. I stalked it carefully through the dried grass, crouched down, and pounced, catching it before if could jump away. I carried it back under the leaf litter to eat, out of sight of passing owls and skunks.

The bookstore was closed on monday, so on a monday three weeks after the concert I was able to drive to the city and have dinner with my new partners. I walked up three flights of stairs, and Thom opened the door and hugged me. It didn't feel any different than when he was in the dreaming, but it made a difference to me. When we kissed our tongues made promises to each other that would fall due later in the evening. Owl's kiss had more questions than promises. I knew Stephen's group and Linda's group were exclusively heterosexual with each other, although Owl and Linda were sometimes lovers and there had been some experimentation earlier within Linda's group. Also Karen and Diane had a borderline but mostly not lesbian relationship and liked keeping it that way. I didn't know what would happen between Owl and me, but I was pretty sure I would like it. In any case I still had Angela.

Owl did botanical drawings. I had told her I wanted to see them, and she had them out. Stephen had said they were good. They were good in a way that I wouldn't have understood without having traveled with her through the green. Art is many things, but it is more deciding what to leave out than what to include. Some of Owl's work looked like standard botanical sketches, but even there I could see she was less concerned with what was important to humans and more concerned with what was important to plants. Collecting sunlight, moving water and energy and minerals, providing adequate structural support. Many of the drawings showed the whole plant, with leaves, branches and roots. There was an element of architectural drawings and plans in them. She had included insects with many of the flowers but no birds. Other drawings looked more abstract, but I knew that they weren't. Humans perceive mostly through their heads. That's where most of their sense organs are, and their brain. Plants don't have a center of focus. They perceive everything all over. Well, not exactly. They perceive light mostly with their leaves and other green parts. A panorama is a picture were you rotate the camera from the center. In one drawing Owl had turned that the other way. She rotated around a gnarled black oak tree from the outside, pointing her eye toward the center. The outside surface of leaves was shown, and there were multiple views of trunk from different directions. Sometimes two sides of one branch were shown going back and joining different versions of the same trunk. Another drawing was a walk through a beech tree. It started outside, entered between branches that had arched down and rooted, continued into the tent like interior space, passed by the smooth gray trunk, exited between different arched branches, and turned around to show the tree from the other side. The top of another drawing showed close up details of the topmost leaf of a maple, and the tree got farther away as you moved downward. A third of the way down a strange thing happened. The tree continued getting farther away, but it was also far away and getting closer, so that the average distance stayed the same. At two thirds of the way down it changed again and just got closer, and at the bottom were close up details of the bottommost root.

Owl said she hadn't known how to draw what a plant saw, but then she saw what Picasso did. His early works were realistic, and his late works were cartoons because that's what people wanted, but his middle works were of a different reality. They showed different views of the same object or person combined into one figure. The same thing happened with Escher. His early works were realistic, and his late works were eye tricks, but his middle works were a different way of seeing the world. She had taken what she could from each of them and tried to show what she experienced. She said she hadn't been entirely successful. I said no artist ever is. It's the nature of the medium. You do what you can. Now that I had seen more than the two she had given Stephen, I asked again about showing her drawings at the bookstore gallery. I said with her less straightforward work people would either understand some of what she was trying to do, like it anyway, think it was over their heads, or say a child could do better. She said yes. I said good, she should decide what she was willing to sell, and we could schedule and assemble a show. Or she could keep all the originals and we could have prints made.

Owl and I sat at a table near the small kitchen while Thom made Greek salad with chunks of green and yellow peppers, tomato, sweet onion, and feta, along with olives, olive oil, vinegar, oregano and garlic. She said she had something that she needed to tell me. In the dreaming she was pregnant, but not in the real world. It was a strange situation even for the dreaming. It had started with Max by accident. She hadn't thought she needed birth control in the dreaming. After three weeks the embryo had stopped growing but remained healthy. Every person they had added to the group since had somehow contributed chromosomes, including Kumau and even Eliska. The embryo had grown a little more and then stopped again each time. It had five biological parents so far, and if the pattern repeated, I would become one also. None of them knew what would happen or what it meant. All they could tell was that the embryo was waiting for something. It may have been what kept us apart and now needed us together. At my look of fear she said it was nothing demonic. They had seen evil and this wasn't it. I trusted her and Thom and knew they were telling the truth. I wanted to know about the evil. They told me how they had recovered a missing child whom Thom had known, and that it had something to do with the government. Thom finished what he was doing and sat down with us. I told them about the two men at the institution and the patients who had disappeared and asked if it could be related. They were shocked and sorry for what I had gone through, and said it seemed likely there was a connection. They had been told by an unknown but seemingly reliable source that they needed to wait, and that they would know when it was time to try to do something to help. We now wondered if the embryo was waiting for the same thing. There was no way to know, so we tried not to worry about it.

Owl got up and started making sweet potato burritos with refried kidney beans, onion, cumin, cayenne, soy sauce, tortillas and cheddar. Thom told me that after his experience with the white footed mouse he had found that he was aware of rodents. So far he had tried being different kinds of squirrels, a chipmunk, a woodchuck, and a woodland jumping mouse. He wanted to show me a northern flying squirrel sometime. I said I'd like that. He avoided city rats. He could also sense rabbits, but not moles, shrews or skunks. On a quick trip to a zoo with Owl through the green, he had found that monkeys would accept him if he was polite, but apes still wouldn't. When Owl was finished prepping it was time to go get Max. We joined minds and stepped out into the green. We flew by trees, streets, buildings, parks, houses, hills, fields, forests, rivers and swamps. Max lived in a small bare cell with three other men and a toilet. He got up from his bunk and greeted us. He showed me his small shelf with a change of clothing, a few books, and a box for his stuff, then took us on a quick tour of the prison. It was a nightmare version of the institution I had been in for two years. He'd been in for nine years this time and had one more to go. Many of the guys had life sentences. Max said if you allowed for exaggeration, most of the bad things you heard about prison were true, and most of the good things were lies. They did have free health care, but it could be hazardous and had all the worst features of socialized medicine. I met Dozer, Max's friend who had helped them rescue the missing child. He said he liked my fish. I said thank you, they were bluegill. He said they looked big for bluegill. I studied them, and said he was right. I guessed I had used to be smaller. He said that would explain it. Owl told me, when we paused in the red oak tree on the way back, that Dozer had gone on some adventures with them, but hadn't told Max about his strange dreams. I said maybe we could invite Ice along sometime.

I had brought some whipped cream and half an iced chocolate sour cream cake which we ate most of after the burritos and Greek salad. When we stood up afterward Thom took my hand and led me to the bedroom. He put his arms around me and kissed me as we stood there. Our tongues told each other it was time to collect on their earlier promises. I felt his hands working the muscles of my shoulder blades, those down along my spine, and those at the top of my buttocks. They caressed my cheeks. I pushed my pelvis against him and felt his erection along my belly. His hands moved between us and undid my jeans while he kept kissing me. He shifted so he could reach into my underwear, through my pubic hair, and between my legs. His fingers stroked and probed into me. I moaned and broke off the kiss. After a few moments I stepped back and pulled my shirt off over my head, took off my bra, and slid off the rest of my clothes. He watched me as he undressed. I pulled the bed open and him down on top of me. I heard Owl doing the dishes while Max watched, unable to help. They came in and undressed and got into bed next to us. Thom's fingers were back between my legs, squishing into me and sliding over my clitoris. I felt his tongue moving over my nipple as he nibbled on it. He moved back up, and I spread the dampness from the head of his penis down along the shaft. I opened my legs as he moved into position and slipped inside me. I had worn my diaphragm, and Max and Owl had checked everyone earlier for disease. I arched my back and pushed up against him. Owl was stroking Max's erection. I closed my eyes and held on to Thom and gave myself up to the sensation of him moving inside me. I felt his excitement. I felt my own building up. I held out. Finally I let myself come and heard Owl gasping beside me. The men kept going and so did we. Thom held me tighter as the cum surged and exploded into me. He continued to move gently inside me as we waited for Max. The bed rocked as he grunted and came.

Thom rolled off me and walked around the bed. Max slid over and kissed me. The smell of Owl's sex on his person excited me. I looked down and saw his penis glisten with her juices. I pulled on it and felt the slickness. He was still partially erect, and I felt his penis grow and harden in my fingers until it was fully erect and pulsing gently. A softer ridge along the underside sprang back up after I pressed it. I massaged his testicles with my fingers and thumb. His hips started moving. I kissed him some more. He moved on top and slid into me. I moved my hands down his back and felt the muscles. I felt the small of his back move up and down as he slowly thrust into me. I held him. I moved against him and enjoyed the sensations. I looked up into his dark eyes. I watched Thom and Owl next to us on the bed. I noticed the mirror on the dresser angled so I could watch the muscles in Max's buttocks slowly knot as he pressed into me, and then relax as he slid back out. Gradually our pace increased to a slow regular rhythm that matched our breathing. For a long time I floated in the darkness. The sensations intensified and I started having orgasms. I grunted softly with each one and continued floating. At some point I felt Max's breathing broaden and deepen as I held on to him. I shifted my pace and breath to match it at the mystical one point two five beats per second. I felt my orgasms flowing like the Monongahela, and then I felt him coming inside of me like Seneca Falls.

Sometime later that evening Owl and Max checked her dream pregnancy. I came fully awake as I felt her try to hold on to her panic. She said the embryo was gone. It was as if it had never been there. She started crying. Thom and Max held her. There was nothing to say. I sat there in a state of shock. I put my hand on her knee and waited. I felt like I was still floating in darkness. Then my eyes got wide and I had some difficulty breathing. No one noticed. I said it might not have gone very far. I got three blank stares and a flicker of hope. Then Owl's eyes got big as she understood what I meant. She and Max and Thom confirmed it. I was now eight weeks pregnant in the dreaming with a healthy and growing embryo. I felt Owl's disappointment and resentment. I said she could have it back. That sobered her up. She said no, the embryo had a mind of its own even if it didn't have much of a brain yet. Owl would respect her and trust that she was doing what was best. And besides, she had already carried her for thirty two months. They examined the embryo and found it now had nine of my chromosomes, as they had expected, paired in various combinations with nine from each of them and five each from Eliska and Kamau. It still had Owl's X chromosome, but after checking carefully they found it now had my mitochondria, so we were both mothers. The embryo had developed an enclosed spinal column so Owl could no longer sense her directly, and her brain was not developed enough for Thom, but Owl said I ought to be able to sense her while she was in this fishlike stage. I reached out and took the others in with me. I was eighteen millimeters long and floating in the darkness. I could move my arms and legs. My eyes were pits and my teeth were starting to develop. I was waiting. It was getting closer.

Owl was reassured. She said that if it worked the same way with me that it did with her, I would only be pregnant in the dreaming when I interacted with the real world, and only when I used my normal human form. I wouldn't be pregnant when I was an animal or used a different form or a younger version of my own form. When Owl had told me earlier about the embryo waiting, I had imagined her waiting for conditions to be right. Now I said it seemed more like she was waiting for something in particular, some object or person, or maybe an event. They all thought about that. Thom said I might be right. Owl was doubtful. Max didn't know. I wanted to know about the unknown source that had told them to wait. What had it said exactly? Thom went back through his memory and found the wording. It had said that just as Thom had known when his time had come, he would know when it returned. I said that that was a strange choice of words. It made it sound like time was personified as some sort of entity. Thom said he had thought it was just flowery language. Owl said she could see what I meant, but it didn't make any sense. She didn't believe in gods, not literal ones anyway. Then she said that wasn't true. She used to see green children, and she had seen a god walk by once. She had nearly forgotten about it. He was the Green Man, a nature god, and after the experience she had started learning about her abilities. But she didn't think there was a god of time. Max said he believed in Dragonfly Girl. Owl said that was different. I didn't say anything, and we let the subject drop. Some time later I noticed that the fish had disappeared. I had always been able to get rid of them or conjure them up if I worked at it a bit, but now they were gone.

I'd had to leave early the next morning to get back and open the bookstore, but not too early. The bookstore didn't open until eleven, so that I could stay open in the evening until seven. Two weeks later we were all lying naked on the floor of the lowest level. Cushions and clothes were scattered about. I was spooning with Owl. She felt nice in my arms, but neither of us could work up much enthusiasm for more sex right now, and we still weren't sure what direction our relationship would take. Max and Thom were more or less passed out. She said she'd tried being an octopus once. It hadn't worked out. She'd panicked and Stephen had had to hit her to bring her out of it. I said Stephen? It was hard to imagine him hitting anyone. She giggled. She said he had been shaking and had barely been able to drive her home in her car through the rain. I felt her smile when she thought about it. I said she should try it again. She had learned a lot since then. She thought about it and said okay, when? I said now. We let sleeping boys lie and stepped out into the green.

Stephen was asleep next to Karen and Frank. We roused his dream form and told him our plan. He was dubious but agreed to come with us. He got dressed, and since Owl and I hadn't bothered, we borrowed a couple of his white tee shirts. Owl's was okay since she was short, but mine was barely long enough. We stopped at an oyster bar that was still open and helped ourselves to some crab cakes. No one noticed us. Most of the lights in the aquarium were out. The penguins were all asleep. We walked up to the big tank. I saw lots of fish swimming around the perimeter but no octopuses. Stephen said they were both diurnal and nocturnal but more often the former. It was probably in its den. I tried to sense if any fish were aware of the octopus. Most weren't, but I found one that was. We couldn't see it from outside the tank, but circled around to be nearer. Stephen and I stood on either side of Owl, and she reached out. She said she could sense it, but it was fuzzy, and it felt like there was an echo of some sort. It was strange. I could feel what she meant through the reptile mind link I was maintaining, although no words could come through the link. I tried to sense where the echo was coming from. After a few moments I figured it out and said it was Stephen. He said what? Other people are always so much more articulate than me. I said Owl wasn't sensing the octopus, he was. She was picking it up indirectly through him because she was used to sensing other mollusks. He wasn't aware of what he was doing because he wasn't used to sensing things. It was a skill that had to be learned. I had shared awareness with fish and birds spontaneously at first, before I had learned to sense them. He seemed dazed by all this. We went over and sat on a bench. I asked Stephen if he wanted to try sharing awareness with the octopus? He said he didn't know. He wanted to, but he was afraid. He had seen what it had done to Owl last time they tried. I said she wasn't able to share awareness with the octopus. I thought the problem had been caused by her doing it indirectly through him, just as she had trouble sensing the octopus through him now. If he wanted to try it, we would help him. He took a deep breath and said yes, he wanted to try.

Owl and I sat on the bench on either side of Stephen. I held us in the link, and we could feel his nervousness. She told him to breathe slowly and relax, to still his mind as much as possible. When we felt him starting to float, she told him to imagine he was an octopus curled up in his den, and then she said to think about the crab cake he had just eaten. I was an octopus waking up in the crevasse I used as a den. It was still dark, but I was thinking about food. I went out and made my way down the rock face, feeling into openings and crevasses with my arms. I flowed across the bottom looking for crabs, scallops, clams, bristle worms, and snails. I found a few small bristle worms but couldn't smell anything else. I never could when it was dark. I headed back to my den. Stephen opened his eyes and looked bewildered. I asked him quietly where the octopus was now. He said curled back up in its den. After a moment he realized what he had said. He looked at both of us and said thank you. I said he was welcome, and that as long as we were here I wanted to try being a stingray.

Please leave a comment. Anything.
I wrote all these words for you. Can't you write one or two for me?

top